A Proper Student Who Only Drinks Nine Potions a Day

It stood five meters away, moonlight shining on its face as droplets of blood dripped from its fangs.

Evan felt warmth spread through his crotch.

Instinctively, he reached down and touched it.

Wet.

The brain damage caused by the potions seemed to have snapped a wire related to emotional perception.

"So it was piss."

His voice was dry, carrying an absurd sort of calm.

"Right. A Monster of this level isn't worthy of making me piss myself."

Pfft.

An extremely faint laugh drifted over from somewhere.

It hadn't come from the Vampire.

The direction was wrong, and so was the distance.

Before Evan could identify the source of that laugh, the Vampire in front of him moved.

It was so fast that even with the enhanced perception of the Night Demon Potion, he couldn't see its movements clearly.

The reaction speed and dynamic vision granted by his 1.9 physique were no different from those of an ordinary person before speed at this level.

Evan hadn't even seen how it moved.

One second, it had been five meters away.

The next, an icy palm had clamped around his throat.

Crack.

Five fingers tightened like hydraulic pincers, their tips digging into the muscles at the sides of his neck and precisely pinning down his carotid artery.

Evan grabbed the long, pale claw with both hands and desperately tried to pry it apart.

His superhuman strength poured into all ten fingers. Veins bulged, and his knuckles turned white.

The other party did not budge.

It was like trying to bend apart a steel pipe welded into a wall.

Evan's face flushed crimson, and the blood vessels at his temples throbbed violently.

He gave up on the futile struggle and forced out a sentence through his distorted, strangled voice.

"Professor Pulis still needs me."

"Aren't you afraid he'll punish you?"

The fingers around his throat paused.

In that instant of hesitation, the grip loosened slightly.

That one second of contact was enough.

The heightened senses granted by the Night Demon Potion came into play at that moment.

Evan's nose caught a scent coming from the hand around his throat, cutting through the smell of blood and dirt.

Sandalwood. Bergamot.

Professor Pulis's perfume.

Back in the cafeteria, whenever Pulis sat across from him, that scent had always followed.

He had smelled it too many times. There was no way he could mistake it.

This Vampire really was one of Pulis's people.

The hand released him.

Evan's body lost its support, and he fell onto the ground on his ass, clutching his throat with both hands as he coughed violently.

The sensation of air flooding back into his lungs was like swallowing shattered glass—painful, yet exhilarating.

At that very moment, a figure suddenly appeared beneath the moonlight.

From Evan's right, a slender silver silhouette swept over with incredible speed. Her boots barely made a sound as they touched the grass.

She stopped in the open space beside Evan and the Vampire, drew a silver-white longsword from her back, and the blade gleamed with a cold light beneath the night sky.

"Release that boy..."

Her voice was crisp and commanding, carrying a deliberately cultivated heroic air.

Then she froze.

"Hm?"

She realized the other party had already let go.

Evan sat on the ground, clutching his throat as he looked up at her and blinked.

The Vampire stood three steps away, his scarlet eyes fixed on the woman who had suddenly appeared, his face full of confusion.

The silver-haired woman held up her sword, maintaining a rather valiant stance, its tip pointed at the Vampire's throat.

Three people, three directions, three expressions.

Silence.

The November night wind blew across the hills, sending the woman's silver hair streaming to one side as the wild grass rustled.

The lights of Bolton City flickered in the distance beneath the night sky, like scenery from another world.

The awkward atmosphere froze beneath the moonlight.

Evan said nothing, silently studying her.

Under the moonlight, the woman was quite beautiful.

She was around 1.7 meters tall, slender but strong, wearing a fitted set of gray leather armor. Its surface showed little wear, making it clear that it was still fairly new.

Two swords were crossed over her back, their hilts protruding from either side of her shoulders and wrapped in black leather strips.

Three leather pouches of different sizes hung from her waist, all bulging with unknown contents.

Her silver hair gave off a soft, cold sheen in the night, falling to her waist with slightly curled ends.

Her most striking feature was her eyes: a pair of golden vertical pupils, with pure amber-gold irises and pupils reduced to narrow vertical slits.

They glowed faintly in the darkness, like two tiny lanterns.

She had a standard oval face, high brow bones, a tall nose bridge, and refined, sculpted features.

She looked to be in her twenties, radiating youthful vitality along with the recklessness of someone new to the world.

The Vampire was the first to break the silence.

"Demon Hunter."

A low, furious voice squeezed out from that ghastly pale face, fangs glinting coldly in the moonlight.

"This isn't your territory."

His tone was filled with anger, but that anger was not directed at Evan. It was aimed at the silver-haired woman before him.

He was furious that he had been controlled earlier, and furious that losing control had caused such a huge mess.

"Demon Hunter?"

Evan's ears perked up, and his eyes lit up.

Demon Hunter...

Demon. Hunter!

Put those two words together, and it sounded exactly like the name of an official organization.

Hope. A variable. It had finally arrived.

Hearing the Vampire's words, the silver-haired woman not only failed to retreat but took a step forward, her sword tip steady at his throat.

She raised her chin slightly, her tone carrying the pride and refusal to yield unique to the young.

"This isn't your territory either, Vampire."

She paused, a disdainful curve appearing at the corner of her lips.

"This is the capitalists' territory."

Sitting on the ground, Evan's mind raced faster than ever.

Within seconds, the information came together: Demon Hunters, an official or semi-official supernatural organization.

They were opposed to the Sanguine, had combat power, an organizational structure, and a concept of territory.

And he, a poor student at the bottom who had only just touched the threshold of the supernatural, needed a powerful patron more than anything.

Pulis was one, but that tree might devour him at any time.

The one before him might be the second.

A plan took shape in a single second.

"Master! You finally came!"

Evan sprang up from the ground in one fluid motion, pretending that he had only just recovered from his terror.

He crossed the distance in two strides and positioned himself precisely between the silver-haired woman and the Vampire.

He used the back of his head to block the woman's stunned expression, preventing the Vampire from spotting any flaw.

"I almost got killed by that Vampire!"

His voice trembled with just the right amount of lingering fear and grievance. At the same time, with his back to the Vampire, he frantically signaled to the woman with his eyes.

The silver-haired woman was stunned for less than half a second.

Her golden vertical pupils flashed, and then understanding dawned.

Her expression swiftly returned to that calm, authoritative look, and her tone was as casual as if she were stating something completely ordinary.

"Don't worry. With Master here, no one can touch you."

She moved Evan behind her, held her longsword across her chest, and looked past Evan's shoulder directly at the Vampire.

"Go back and tell your master. Arkham is my student, Hill Adolf's student."

"You can test potions on him, but don't go too far."

The Vampire, now completely free of control, stood beneath the moonlight. His scarlet eyes swept back and forth between the two of them, his expression as dark as the sea before a storm.

He was furious.

But there was nothing he could do.

He knew he could not defeat this damned woman.

What had happened on Gooding Street had already proven that.

As for the relationship between these two, he had no reason to doubt it.

When he had lost control earlier, this kid named Arkham had actually known that his master was Pulis.

How could an ordinary potion test subject possibly know that?

And then there was his extraordinary resistance to drugs.

There was a ninety percent chance he had been a reserve agent planted by the Demon Hunters among the Sages from the very beginning.

"Lowlife trash."

The Vampire snorted coldly, his body dispersing like smoke scattered by the night wind as he vanished into the darkness in an instant.

The silver-haired woman stared in the direction where he had disappeared for a second, then began cursing furiously at the empty night.

"You're the lowlife trash! Every last one of you Sanguine are lowlife trash!"

She cursed for a full five or six lines, growing louder and louder as she did, her silver hair whipping around with her agitated movements.

Only after confirming that he had truly gone far away did she sheathe her sword, let out a long breath, and allow her shoulders to slump slightly.